Philadelphia Dance Projects (PDP) presents DANCE UP CLOSE, a winter series highlighting the work of an exciting set of predominately Philadelphia artists. This stylistically diverse and spirited mid-winter/mid-week dance festival will feature larger dance works by Tori Lawrence, Megan Mazarick and Marion Ramirez, and short pieces by Kat Sullivan, Danielle Currica and Paige Phillips along with short films by Amalia Colon-Nava and Chamecki/Lerner. Out of town guests Chamecki/Lerner will also lead a special dance/video workshop “Dance in Frame.”
Performances are Wednesday, January 22 & Thursday, January 23 at Christ Church Neighborhood House (20 North American Street) featuring Tori Lawrence in Junkspace. The second program on Wednesday, February 26 and Thursday, February 27 at Christ Church Neighborhood House brings together choreographers Megan Mazarick in Boundaries & Other Works, and Marion Ramirez in Nest. The final program, Reassembling Corporeal Knowledge, an evening of short videos and live solos and duets, at Fringe Arts (140 North Columbus Boulevard) is on Wedneday, March 18 and Thursday, March 19. The program showcases works by Danielle Currica, Kat Sullivan and Paige Phillips, with videos by Chamecki/Lerner, and Amalia Colon-Nava. All performances are at 7:00 PM.
Tickets at $15, $10 for students, are available at danceboxoffice.com for CC Neighborhood House
Founded in 2010, Tori Lawrence + Co. is a New York City-based group of movement artists, musicians, filmmakers and designers who embed innovative art into unconventional settings. Tori Lawrence creates immersive site-specific dances, interdisciplinary performance installations, and dance films that explore the space between media and the relationship between body and environment. Working mainly in sites that are overlooked, forgotten or abandoned, the projects inspire an imaginative and sustainable way of looking at, thinking about, and using space. The company has been presented nationally and internationally, including three site-specific project commissions by The Barnes Foundation. They have recently been awarded artist residencies at Yaddo (NY), PLAYA (Oregon, Chez Bushwick (NYC) and BRUNAKRA (Sweden). They have been guest artists at Franklin & Marshall College, and are currently in residence at Middlebury College.
Megan Mazarick, choreographer, teacher, performer, collaborator and curator of Contemporary Dance, creates work that is humorous, serious, theatrical, and personal, often including a stop motion physicality and love of fantasy. Her choreography has been presented in Philadelphia at Live Arts Festival, nEW Festival, Philadelphia Dance Projects, and PARD, and in New York City at Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, and Dance New Amsterdam. She has toured throughout the USA as part of various dance festivals and events, and internationally at Budapest’s Trafo Theatre, Bulgaria’s BlackBox Theater and Dance Festival, Singapore Fringe Festival, Zielony Jazdow Festival in Warsaw, and By Change Festival in Cairo. An Assistant Professor of Dance at Georgian Court University, she received her BFA from University of North Carolina at Greensboro and MFA at Temple University.
Puerto Rican dance artist Marion Ramirez holds a BFA in dance studies form The Laban Center in London and an MFA from Temple University where she currently teaches Contact Improvisation and Somatics. Since 2003 she has been immersed in the practice of Kinetic Awareness and Body-Mind Centering®, and is currently completing a Certification in Somatic Movement Therapy (Dynamic Embodiment™) with Dr. Martha Eddy. Her work uses dance as a vehicle to inhabit the body’s sense of agency, to empower self-knowledge, to approach cultural exchange, to resist violence and to engage respectfully with the world.
Born in Guyana, South America and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Danielle Currica graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Dance and Choreography in 2009. As a freelance dance artist in Philadelphia, she has worked with Dance Theatre X, idiosynCrazy productions, Dance4Nia Repertory Ensemble, and Green Chair Dance Group, and appears as Sophie Sucre of Philadelphia’s neo-burlesque troupe The Peek-a- Boo Revue.
Since graduating from Franklin & Marshall College with a BA in Dance in 2014, Kat Sullivan has been performing and creating work with Trio C, SKI BALL, Antonia & Artists, Anne-Marie Mulgrew & Dancers CO., and <fidget>. She has collaborated with independent artists Sean Thomas Boyt, Meredith Stapleton and Evalina Carbonell, and has performed and shown work at Koresh’s Come Together Festival, Philly Fringe Festival and the Triskelion Arts Comedy in Dance Festival in New York City.
Amalia Colón-Nava is a dance/performance artist/filmmaker emerging on the Philly dance scene as a recent graduate of University of the Arts. She has presented her own work in Philly and at various venues in Boston. Further afield she has performed with Lauren Baskt, Paris, and JoMe Dance at the Fringe Buzz Montreal 2019 Festival.
Paige Phillips is a Philadelphia-based choreographer and interdisciplinary artist. Her artwork engages most frequently with dancer, movement scores, installation and video, and her content is concerned with recontextualizing rituals and imagery from pop-culture and religion to better understand identity politics. Some venues where she has exhibited include: National Museum of Singapore, Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Park Gallery (Kathmandu, Nepal), Microscope Gallery (New York City), Columbus College of Art and Design, On the Boards and Velocity Dance Center (both in Seattle), and Pyramid Atlantic (Washington, DC), along with Philadelphia venues Mascher Space, the CEC, Fringe Arts, High Tide Gallery, and Little Berlin.
Chamecki/Lerner is a 25-year collaboration between Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner, creating a body of work that includes dance performances, video and installation pieces. Their performance work has been presented in the US by The Kitchen, DRW, the Joyce Theater, Performance Space 122, Central Park SummerStage, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Mass MoCA, Diverseworks, Jacob’s Pillow, and American Dance Festival. They have toured extensively throughout Brazil as well as Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Portugal, The Netherlands, UK, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Finland and Romania.
PDP Presents is made possible with support from the William Penn Foundation, The Philadelphia Cultural Fund and individual donors.
For more than twenty years, Philadelphia Dance Projects has participated in developing new dance work and presented stellar artists representing an array of styles and content. The core activities of PDP include presenting dance through performances and “informances,” providing professional development for dance artists through a Budapest/Philadelphia Exchange residency and various workshops/classes, as well as sponsoring learning opportunities for students through a teaching artist project in a local public high school. PDP has also initiated two artists’ history projects to preserve and bring to light the role that dance artists have played in developing and contributing to culture and urban life in Philadelphia.
